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The company has used its Lenovo Tech World conference to announce the Smart Cast, a smartphone with a built-in laser projector. The concept device projects a full-scale keyboard (or piano, or gaming screen) onto a surface below, enabling users to make use of a much bigger piece of virtual "hardware" than would usually be possible.

The projector is said to be "focus free" -- a significant difference to those included on pocket devices already, such as the Pico projector and even a couple of smartphones. As well as the table projection it will also be able to cast films and games onto a wall like a normal projector.

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Unfortunately, details are scant on when the phone (or rather, the tech powering this concept) will make it into a mass-production consumer device. Those present at the conference report that no pricing or availability was made public, with just a few slides being showcased to illustrate the device and its possibilities.

Those demos included Fruit Ninja running on a tabletop projected screen, a full musical keyboard, an integrated kickstand and an illustration of how the projector could "flip" around to project images in the required direction.

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Various devices have attempted this sort of thing before, both in mobile forms and as an at-home projector-based PC. None have proven yet to be winners in the mass-market, so here's hoping Lenovo can find a way to turn this into something more appealing.

Fortunately for fans of the absurd, that wasn't the only madcap device Lenovo literally had up its sleeve at the conference.

Lenovo 'Magic View'

The company also showcased the Magic View, which is a smart watch with a second, tiny, supposedly "private" screen built into the strap. The company claimed that consumers would be able to lift up the watch and peer into the screen, to see an image seemingly 20 times larger than the watch itself. You will be able to "look around" images and see private messages you don't want other people to see.

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Lenovo 'Smart Shoes'

Lenovo also unveiled "smart shoes" which would be able to monitor your exercise levels, calorie consumption and even your mood, and relay that information to your smart devices.

The shoes will also have a limited navigation feature -- they will indicate turns to other road (or pavement) users as you move about the world. Lenovo is pitching the idea not as a finished product in itself, but rather an illustration of how its wider work on an internet of things platform, based on the Lenovo Cloud, can function.